While observing me stepping onto the scales to weigh, my 2.5 yr old son asked “mommy, how come you only weigh your feet?”
When my son was about 3 he was learning to count. He’d count anything. While traveling down a country road, he was counting mailboxes.
“One, two, three, a-buncha-them, five…”
Just as an aside, children have to understand about 3000 words before speaking one.
Band name!
Bruiser is 2 and 9 months and has the same logorrhea as the Torqueling, as well as a rapidly developing vocabulary. Anything and everything gets commentary, and often with new words we had no idea he knew (all SFW so far). Earlier this week we had some visitors over for a crayfish dinner and everyone was having a great time. Bruiser was of course getting into the spirit of things and being a little rambunctious, throwing a stuffed toy SpongeBob up in the air and shouting stuff. One particular throw went straight up and I was quick enough to catch it in midair and stuff it in my pocket without him seeing. Without missing a beat in his ongoing monologue, he shouted
"Where’s my SpongeBob SQUAREPANTS?!"
I couldn’t stop laughing for a couple minutes.
One from my older daughter at two
“Rachel, take your finger out of your nose”
“Mummy, go outside.”
“Why?”
“So I can put my finger in my nose”
Sounds just like my 3 year old daughter.
“Ok Em, we’re going home now”
“But I don’t want to go home.”
She just can’t see why we would be doing something when it’s not what she wants to do.
She also requires proof of things. If you tell her she can’t have a bickie (cookie) because there are none left, she demands to see it.
“I wanna see it.”
“You can’t see it Emily, the box is empty”
“I wanna see it empty.”
So you’d better make sure the box really is empty! I like this trait and always go out of my way to show her that what I’m saying is true.
Another of her gems:
“Ok Em, we’re going to go to the park and we’ll pick Gran up on the way.”
(confused and astonished)“No, but she’s too heavy!”
Something else she came out with that I thought was hilarious and have no idea where she picked it up:
Daddy burps
Emily says, “gasp was that a burp Daddy? Or was it your bum talking?”
I would love to know where that came from.
I am working with a 3 yr old with Downs Syndrome who is evidence of that. His speech therapist insists we use sign language to communicate with him because he has little speech.
He just about rolls his eyes at all attempts at sign language. Though he can only speak one word sentences he understands WAY more and is very dismissive of any encouragement of him signing.
I was hanging out with a 3 YO this weekend, and at one point she came and got me and said, “Come on, let’s go to the park!” So I took her hand, and she led me downstairs, and into the den. Then she got on her little tryke and rode it around.
I said, “Are we in the park now?”
And she said, “No, we can’t go to the park.”
I said, “Why not?”
And she said, utterly grave, “Because we don’t have our jackets.”
Ready for work as a political press secretary, I see! 
At my baby shower a few weekends ago, my aunt-in-law explained to her 3-year-old that we were having a party because I have a baby in my belly. She seemed confused by this and thought about it for a few momments. Then she asked, “Is the baby going to jump out and yell “surprise”?”
Sounds like the whole, “My goodness, another cookie? if you have one more cookie, you’re going to turn into one!” Maybe he heard that at some point and absorbed the idea?
I don’t have kids of my own, so I’m not sure what age this generally happens at. A couple of times I’ve been around toddlers that have figured out how to put words together into sentences and even sentences together into paragraphs - even though not a single word is recognizable as English. The kid will tell these elaborate stories full of expression and gesturing and it’s clear that he or she knows precisely what they’re talking about. They just haven’t quite gotten the hang of communicating it to anyone else yet.
Sorry, it’s something I learned in child development in nursing school 40 years ago.
These kids are all so precious and precocious. I can’t wait… 4 1/2 months until the wedding… and I start trying to make babies!
The autistic three-year-old I work with does a similar thing, but way sneakier. He has a self-stimulatory habit of spinning objects in front of his eyes, and he knows I frown on this behavior. Occasionally, he’ll find a toy (usually one of his brother’s Bionical cast-offs) in the room that spins. Does he start spinning it immediately? Oh, no! He’ll palm the toy and then innocently ask for a break so he can go out of my sight and spin to his heart’s content. I’m on to you, kid!
His new phrase is to say, “I’m just (doing whatever thing I’m not supposed to be doing).”
Me: “D, get off of there!”
Him: “I’m just jumping on the bed!”
Me: “I know, that’s why I’m telling you to get off!”
My sister-in-law has two sons, a toddler and an 8 mos. old. The toddler gets annoyed that his little brother tries to grab his toys. One day the baby was bothering his older brother when their mother said, “He just wants your attention.” The toddler replied “No! My attention!”
My mother says I did this one too.
“Can I have a cookie?”
“No. We’re out of cookies.”
“Show me.”
“Show you what? We’re out of cookies! There’s nothing to show!”
“SHOW me.”
Eventually she figured out to hang on to the box to show me it was empty, after which I was okay.
My three year old gave a huge burp, then looked at me surprised and said, “Daddy, I farted out my mouth!”
My 15-month-old daughter, when getting full, will take a piece up to her mouth, smile and say “YUMMMM,” and return the piece to her tray, all very deliberately and precisely. It’s apparently her way of saying “It was delicious, but I’m stuffed!”
They call it patterning, and it is a sign of language readiness. The funny thing is that it sounds just like the language they are starting to learn. Babies learning English sound like they are talking English and babies learning Danish sound like they are talking Danish, only of course it is complete gibberish. It is part of how they get the hang of how their language is structured.
My daughter went through a language immersion program in French starting at 4.5. It was interesting walking into her room and hearing her pattern French just as she did three years before in English.